CHAPTER VI
THE LIFE LINE
There were smiles before comment began, as the minister finished his oddstory, which, as everybody seemed to feel, was told rather to distractattention from the outlook in the present strait than as having anyserious application to the theme under discussion, and, for a time,there was a departure from the subject. The wind still howled outside,but the cold did not increase perceptibly. A more cheerful feeling hadobtained and the situation was now looked upon by most of the prisonersas but one of the extraordinary incidents of Rocky Mountain travel.
The one woman had retired to her own car and Stafford, after a season ofwild imagining, had returned to earth again. He sat looking upon thescene with a degree of interest.
Experienced and toughened man of the world as he chanced to be, he wasnot lacking in keen sympathies, and he wondered, as he studied the facesabout him, how the test would be endured should the car be no longerheated and the supply of food become exhausted before aid could reachthem? He had been snowbound before, and he knew the more thanuncomfortable possibilities of the case. There might be a more continuedfall of snow than any one anticipated. The howl of the wind had subsideda little and was no longer so menacing in tone, but rather whistled andmuttered, as it tossed the masses of snow about. It seemed to Staffordas indicating no increased fierceness of the storm but, instead, moresnow. The man who has experienced much of climes and seasons learns torecognize a prophecy in the voice of the wind and to set his house inorder accordingly. In this case, Stafford had much rather have heard thewind still giving utterance to its wolf's howls. Howls and bluster werenothing, but an addition to the difficulties of the relief train waswhat was most to fear. So Stafford did not like the wind's morewhimpering tones. The other passengers, with the exception of a grizzledminer, and perhaps, a few others who had long known the Storm Kingpersonally, appeared delighted at any abatement of the turmoil outside.To them, lack of noise was proof of lack of peril.
It was the Colonel, that fine combination of Colonel Newcombe, Mr.Macawber and an up-to-date retired American army officer, who gavedirection to the course of events again, as the discussion went on idly.He broke in:
"What the minister told us regarding what was or was not a specialprovidence relieved us, certainly, for it gave us a conundrum, andconundrums distract the mind, but we must keep the distraction up. Havethere been no other providential dispensations?" He turned to the miner,whom he chanced to know well:
"Here, Jim, you who have been so long in the mountains, ought to be ableto tell us of escapes which seemed purely providential. Don't you knowof any such affair?"
The miner, who was diffident, and who, furthermore, spoke in mountainphrase and with a queer stutter, tried to say that he really did know ofone such case, and the Colonel forced him to tell the story. Translatedinto English--for it was with difficulty that the miner was understood,and the Colonel, who was familiar with the account, gave most ofit--this is the story of what happened to a man and wife, notaltogether tenderfeet, in the hills, and what was accomplished by
THE LIFE LINE
Robert Felton was in luck when he met an Eastern girl in Salt Lake City.He was from Chicago and she from Boston. An inveterate sportsman wasFelton and each autumn when he came out to visit a mine in which he wasinterested the trip terminated with a hunting expedition which extendedsometimes to the very edge of the time of storms and snow. Once or twicehe and his companions had been nearly caught snowbound in the mountainsand he had acquired experience, not perhaps sufficient.
He met a tall bronze-haired, gray-eyed Catherine Murdoch who was on avisit from the East--and that settled it. He fell in love a thousandfeet and wooed with all the vigor and persistency he might haveexhibited after elk or bear. It didn't take long. The splendid advanceof the tempestuous hunter-miner, business man, as cultivated as she too,somehow fascinated the frigid beauty and she yielded in almost no time.They met in June, were married in September and spent the winter andspring and summer in Chicago. Then, with approaching autumn, came againupon Felton the mountain fever, and he proposed the usual Western trip.He was in love as deeply as ever and he was a considerate man.
"We'll go to Salt Lake City," he said, "and I'll attend to mybusiness--it's all in town there--and then, dear, you'll let me make ahunting trip, won't you, while you stay in the city and have a good timewith Mary." Mary was Mrs. Felton's cousin.
"Where do you hunt, Bob?" inquired Mrs. Felton.
"Oh, generally away up a canyon which forks from one where a couple ofmy friends have a mine. I've had a sort of shack built away up on theside of this branch canyon, which is about five miles across countryfrom the mine, and, every fall, they send over a stock ofprovisions--canned goods and flour, and sugar and tea and coffee--andcome over themselves when they can and hunt and fish with me. It will bea little late this year."
"What sort of a place is this shack of yours?"
"It's fine. There are a cook stove and table and three chairs and a bed.There's a window, too, and there's a lithograph of Li Hung Chang tackedup on the wall. It's just voluptuous--makes you think of the Taj Mahalon the outside and the boudoir of a Sultan's favorite in the inside.It's a dream."
"Bob, I'm not going to stay in Salt Lake City. I'm going hunting withyou."
"What?"
The tone of the lady became just a shade pleading:
"Why not, Bob?"
"Madam, you're an honor to my home but in a shack in the mountains youwould be like La Cigale. Out of your fitting clime and place and yourown sweet season, you would perish as do the summer insects. So go theephemera. Why, dear, up in the shack there, it's only hunting, andfishing, and climbing or falling and washing tin dishes and eating andsleeping as sleep the dead and then doing the same things over again.You're no jewel for such a setting."
The charming lady hesitated for a moment and then spoke verythoughtfully and earnestly though, it must be admitted, with a certaindegree of cooingness.
"Bob, I'm afraid I've been negligent, perhaps criminally secretive--butI have failed to make clear to you one side of my character. I wish youto understand, sir, that I have been in the Adirondacks, season afterseason, that I can swim like a duck, that I can cast a fly and that Ican shoot tolerably well. Furthermore I can cook almost anything in atin dish. Am I not going with you, Bob?"
There was some astonishment and a whoop, certain excusabledemonstrations and, two weeks later, his business concluded in Salt LakeCity, Felton and his wife were up in the cabin in the mountain and thenickel had been fairly dropped in the Western slot.
It is wonderful when a man is afield with a man companion whounderstands both him and the woods. It is more wonderful still when thecompanion is a woman and the creature closest to him and understands allthings, as well. His old friends of the mining camp--came over andhunted with him as usual and that fair veneered barbarian cookedfamously for them, like a laughing, chaffing squaw and added two more toher list of her fervent admirers. Never were such happy days for Feltonas when he fished or hunted with his wife. Woman who well knew themountains, wise as well as beautiful woman, she had provided herselfwith a suit for the time's exigency. Thick woolen was it, ending inknickerbockers and stout shoes. There was a skirt which, by unclaspingits belt, could be taken on or off in an instant. She proved sturdy andthere is no occasion for the telling of the fishing and hunting recordsof the two. They were most content and they lingered in the mountains.
One day--it was late for autumn--in the foothills--Jim Trumbull, one ofFelton's two mining friends over on a visit said abruptly:
"Felton, it's time to leave. We're all ready to skip."
"I think so too," said Felton. "Those first little snows seem ominous. Ithink we'll get it early in the season. I intend to leave to-morrownight. The burros are all ready."
But the next day Felton and his wife found tracks and hunting and a goodday of it, and so night found them still in the cabin. At eight o'clockin the evening Felton went out and looke
d about. There was a great ringaround the moon, and the stars had a dim look, not like their usualstory. "It looks like the sky over Chicago," Felton muttered. He sleptuneasily and was awake at daylight looking anxiously from the cabindoor. The earth had changed. The universe was white. The earth waswhite and the air was white. He leaped back into the cabin. Breakfastover, the man who had forced himself to eat, said:
"Get a day's food, Kate, and get on your hunting dress, with thickgarments under it, as quickly as you can."
She did as he told her and he made swiftly a back load of the provisionsand her skirt and two great blankets. Well knew he that they must reachParson's Camp or be lost.
They plunged into the whiteness. They must cross the billowy tongue ofhigh land up and down lying between the two forks of the great canyon.Across this mesa ran a rude trail which none knew better than didFelton, but to feel and keep it with this white shroud of snow upon theground and in the air was a feat almost impossible. They plunged aheadinto the white depths, for the wind had made the snow deep in theopening, and this depth, while it retarded their progress, was after alla godsend. It aided Felton in keeping the trail. What need to tell ofthe details of that awful day? Darkness was falling when Felton carriedan exhausted and senseless woman into Parson's Camp. There was no onethere. Felton struck a match and found a half-burned candle. He gavehis wife whiskey and water and, later, food, and she was soon herself,for the trouble was but exhaustion. Then Felton sat down upon a chairand figured the thing out aloud.
"THEY PLUNGED INTO THE WHITENESS"]
"They thought we'd gone and so did not pay any attention to us. They hadsense enough to skip in time."
His wife was up and beside him now.
"What of it?" she said, "we have shelter and warmth, and when it stopssnowing perhaps we can dig out"--seeing his face, she added--"anywaywe'll be rescued, somehow." Her husband laughed, agreeingly.
"Of course," he said, "we're all right." Then he began looking aroundfor food.
He found in one corner a bushel of potatoes and hanging beside a bunk ofshelves where the cook had kept his dishes, there was a good part of adried deer's ham. Standing on a chair he peered over the top of theshelves. There was nothing there.
"We shall have to live on dried venison and potatoes," he said. "Theyseem to have left most of their stuff on top here," and the lady wascontent.
"We'll have venison in all sorts of ways," she commented. "Here's somesalt," and she held up a little bag she had found on the floor.
They supped on what they had brought and slept in the bunk which withits belongings, had been abandoned by one of Felton's friends. Therepassed a couple of blithesome days--to the woman--while Felton, braveliar, smiled and made fires, and puns and love, and was sick at heartand full of an inflammatory vocabulary in his inmost being. The minershad probably not yet half way floundered through the snow lying betweenthem and a more or less green old valley. Without aid from the outsideFelton knew that he and his wife must die.
The snow fell quietly, steadily, remorselessly. When the two should bemissed on the arrival of the miners at the settlement, it was more thanlikely that the mountains would be inaccessible until spring.
Felton found an axe and kept himself from desperation by digging outcertain trees in a wind blown clear space one side of the cabin. Thesmall trees he converted into firewood, passing the sticks through thewindow to Kate, who delightedly piled the fuel up in great stacks by thechimney. It was not very cold, and they congratulated themselves upontheir store of wood, which was carefully husbanded, for futurecontingencies.
On the fourth day it ceased snowing and they could see the world. It wasall white. The snow was about five feet on a level around the house. Thecanyon down which the home trail ran was evenly filled with featherypowdered snow. It grew colder. Felton at last told the truth toCatherine.
"Dear, I have been lying to you frightfully. There has been no food onthe top of the big shelf. We have enough to live on for four or fivedays, at the utmost. Then we must starve. We are supposed by our friendsto be safe, and we cannot reach the outside world. It would take weeksfor the most determined men to reach us--from Sharon even, the nearestsettlement."
Any man should be satisfied with what this woman did then. She said:"Dear, the only reproach I have is that you did not tell me the truesituation at first. Then we could have suffered together, and that wouldhave been better. As it is I think I realize all the situation now. Weare together and we have been very happy anyhow."
This altogether illogical conclusion of her words somehow strengthenedFelton wonderfully. He began fumbling round the room. Courage filled hisheart, without reason, he felt, but with courage regained he was notinclined to quibble as to its source.
"I don't know," he said, "somehow, my girl, you've given me hope. I'llbet the good God will help us."
"Course He will," responded this dignified, blessed young matron bornand bred in Boston.
"Come," said Catherine, rousing herself from the thoughtful mood whichhad gripped her, after the first excitement of Felton's revelation wasover. "We haven't half explored this place. Who knows but there's abarrel of flour stowed away in some dark corner."
"Behind this door--for example," said Felton, entering into his wife'smood, and glad for any little diversion to check thought andimagination.
There had been standing against the wall in one dark corner of the rooman old door, evidently brought in from some outhouse for the repairingof its hinges. It had not been disturbed since the new occupancy of theplace. Felton grasped the pineplanks in both hands and set them to oneside. There semi-gleaming in the candlelight hung revealed one of thetwo business ends of the common place and eminently valuable telephoneof North America.
Felton gasped and then sat down backwards on the floor. "Holy smoke,"was all he said.
Catherine came running to the half dazed man but for a little time hesaid nothing. He was thinking. He remembered suddenly that there was atelephone between the mine and the nearest town in the valley, that towhich the miners had fled. Of course the line was deep beneath the snow,part of the way, but it might be working. He looked at his wife in adazed way, clambered to his feet and took hold of the receiver.
"Don't be disappointed," said Catherine, "if it doesn't work. We shallbe saved somehow."
"Hello!" shouted Felton, into the familiar, waiting 'phone.
The dazed wife stood by in the silence which ensued, saying nothing.
Moment after moment passed and there came no answer. Still the man stoodthere repeating at intervals of four or five minutes the hopeless word,the call "Hello". Suddenly he upreared himself, laughed somewhat wildly,and applied his lips to the transmitter.
"Hello! Who is this?" came the query from Sharon.
"I am Robert Felton. Tell Jim Worthy or George Long that we are snowedin at Parsons, without provisions for more than a few days, and tellthem to come in a hurry--the trail is from five to twenty feet deep insnow."
"Who do you mean by we--all of the Parson's crowd?"
Then another question was put.
"My wife is with me--we are alone--the Parson's outfit left the nightthe storm began."
"All right. Keep a stiff upper lip. There'll be help coming," called theoperator, and the bell rung ending the conversation.
Felton could not speak. He sat dumbly waiting, while Catherine chatteredto him of commonplace things to win him back to his ordinary frame ofmind.
Soon the telephone bell rang again, and this time friendly, well knownvoices gave messages of hope and good cheer. It was rumored that the menfrom Parson's camp were on the way--but so far they had not arrived. Menand horses amply supplied with tools, with provisions, with everythingneedful, would leave the valley at once for the work of rescue.
"But how long can you hold out?" at last broke in one of the heartsome,friendly voices.
"It may take us ten or even twenty days to shovel through to you--canyou stand such a siege?"
"We'll do ou
r best," returned Felton, over the wire, "but the truth is,we are pretty short of food, so take no chances."
They were already living on carefully measured out rations and Feltonresolved to reduce his own portion below the meagre amount he hadalready given himself.
"Keep up heart, we'll help you--Good-bye!" So ended this talk withWorthy and Long.
The days dragged. The wood chopping, the fire keeping, the storytelling, to beguile the weary hours, went on. Once or twice a day came amessage of good hope from Sharon. The rescuers were off, and in theshortest time possible would reach the beleagured couple.
One morning there came a sharp, insistent ringing of the bell whichopened the door of the world to these two who were making their onedaily meal from scraps of dried meat, and almost the very last of thetreasured rations were in their hands at the moment.
"Hello!" called Felton at the 'phone in a moment.
"Hello! That you Felton?"
"Yes. This isn't Tom, is it?"
"Yes--of course, Tom, just in from Parson's--been hearing about you. Weleft in a hurry--mighty lucky or you wouldn't have had the telephoneconnected and ready for business."
It was one of the men from Parson's camp.
"They've reached Sharon!" said Felton to Catherine.
"Say!" came Tom's voice over the wire, "You've found the stores, haven'tyou?"
"What stores?" replied Felton--"We found a little dried venison, andsome potatoes in the cupboard, but they are all gone."
"Darn a tenderfoot anyway!" shouted Tom--then recollecting himself hewent on. "Take up a board there over by the table. Where do you expectto find provisions if not in the cellar?" Then he muttered to himself."They're in luck. It's just a providence! We thought of packing thatgrub down with us."
Down went the hand of Felton, and away he sprung to the square pinetable near the door. Taking up a loose board he gazed exantantly intowhat Tom called the cellar, a square hole under the floor, filled withboxes and kegs and tin cans of meat and vegetables and biscuits.
"Catherine!" he called, but Catherine was already there, kneeling byhim, her arms around his neck. She was crying, the brave girl, andFelton was conscious of a sneaking desire to follow her example.
"But won't we feast?" at last Catherine spoke. And then she ran to thetelephone to send her own special message to Tom, and to the wholeParsons outfit, and it is certain that there never went over the wires amore grateful and gracious thankfulness than was expressed by Catherineand Felton upon this occasion.
And so, with renewed life, the two awaited events, and one day, towardnoon, they heard through the stillness a faint sound, a sort of metallicclink, and a little later they were sure of the welcome ring of men'svoices. Felton fired off the loaded rifle which hung over the cabin doorat Parson's and soon came an answering volley of pistol shots and afaintly heard muffled "hurrah."
Felton seized his own snow shovel, and began madly working through thedrifts in front of the door. His efforts looked puny in the waste ofsnow, but it was a relief to his nerves to be active, and soon Catherinejoined him, laughing and royally flourishing the Parsons broom.
It was two hours before the rescuing army of miners and cowboys reachedthe little lane which Felton and Catherine had cut out and swept forthem--scarce ten yards it reached from the doorway. And then, well, thenit was but a few days back to the world--that world which had been savedto Felton and his wife by the life line, the wire stretched across andthrough the snow between mountains and men.